Being more than a Simulacrum
by chris the cynic
Summary: Shego creates a clone of Kim; she won't say why, but she also won't lie to the clone. Inspired, with permission, by Blackbird's "All I Really Want" and the question, "What if Shego had been honest from the start?" Eventual Kigo, after a fashion.
1. Welcome to the World

When she woke up, her eyes stayed closed. It was a practiced skill; it had taken forever to perfect. Originally her eyes had always snapped open. When pretending you're still unconscious could make the difference that saved the world, it was best to keep your eyes closed on waking.

She wasn't in her bed. That was easy enough to feel. The noises would have alerted her anyway. They, combined with the smell, told her she was in a hospital or infirmary.

She subtly tested her limbs. They weren't bound. Probably meant she was amoung friendlies. Even so, when she opened her eyes it started with just a hopefully unnoticeable cracking open of her left eye. Just in case she judged wrong and she'd been captured by the enemy.

What she saw confirmed what she already knew: some kind of medical facility.

To get more information from her surroundings she was going to have to reveal she was awake, but there were other sources of information. What was the last thing she remembered. Her mind was hazy, but she thought she put things into the right order. If she had, then that would mean the last thing she remembered was fighting Shego. She must have been knocked unconscious, but that didn't tell her who brought her to here. Friend or foe?

To find out she would have to tip her hand, so she opened her eyes then tried to sit up.

A hand firmly, but gently, forced her back down.

"I wouldn't do that in your current state."

She recognized the voice: Shego. She was amoung enemies. That clarified nothing. If Shego had control of her then why wasn't she dead? Why wasn't she locked into the hospital bed? Why did Shego's voice lack animosity and taunting?

She decided to play along, "What is my current state?" she asked as politely as she could.

"You're a recently created clone," Shego said in an infuriatingly matter of fact manner.

Her eyes opened wide in panic. If she was a clone then that meant there would be no rescue, there would be no one to stop whatever it was that Shego planned to do to her.

"What are you going to do to me," she asked, trying to keep the fear from her voice.

"Nothing. You can go to your family if you like. They'll accept you like a long lost daughter and never think any less of you for being a clone. You know that."

"But..." she let the word hang when she realized she didn't have a sentence to follow it with.

"You're unrestrained, you know your way out. If you want to, you can leave. I've instructed the henchmen: no one will try to stop you."

"I, uh, actually don't know my way out," she admitted.

"Oh." Shego sounded somewhat surprised. "Out that door," she pointed, "take a left, go passed the training area, take a right after the living quarters, and continue to the end of the hall." Shego looked away as if she were finished, but then she added, "But wait twelve to fifteen minutes for your body to adjust to being … made."

The girl on the infirmary bed was trying to take this all in.

If she was a clone then there were so many questions. How would she distinguish herself from the original? Were her memories, feelings, and personality less real because they belonged to someone else? Why did she have those things, which DNA surely wouldn't carry, in the first place? Why had she been cloned? How would she explain to other people, "Oh, I'm not Kim, I'm just her clone"? What would she do with her life? Did she need to live in fear of carbonated beverages? Was the process that created her stable? While she was sure Kim's family would accept her if she asked them, could she convince everyone else that she wasn't Kim's evil clone? All of these things and more came to her mind, some came and went so fast she couldn't hold onto the thoughts long enough to remember them.

And, on the other hand, if she wasn't a clone, then what sort of mind game was being played here?

"Why did you make me if you don't plan to do anything to me?"

Shego sighed. "This may surprise you, Princess, but there aren't any experts on clone psychology out there. We weren't even sure if telling you you were a clone would cause a breakdown. We made up an elaborate lie just to spare you from that possibility but in the end I decided to tell you the truth, hope for the best, and have a therapist on standby."

The girl said, "Two things."

"The first?"

"If there's a therapist on standby where is he?"

"_She_ is in the next room."

The girl nodded. "Second: How does that relate to my question?"

"It relates to your question because we also don't know what telling you why you were created would do to you. One theory is that you'll latch onto it as your purpose in life. Another is that you'll rebel against it. A third is that it will have no effect upon you at all." Shego paused. "Regardless, to be on the safe side, I'm not telling.

"You're going to have to work things out for yourself."

"So you created me, and now you're just going to let me go?"

"If that's what you want."

"What do _you_ want?"

"I want you to decide, of your own free will, to stay around here for a while and get a better idea of what it's like than you would racing in, blowing stuff up, and racing out again."

The clone was puzzled, "Why would I do that?"

"Why not?" Shego asked.

The girl gave a look that indicated it wasn't a good enough answer.

"Curiosity?" Shego asked.

The girl thought that was a tempting reason, she'd never had access to one of the bases. She saw them mostly through ventilation systems and the lab that housed whatever the latest "super" weapon happened to be. Beyond that she knew almost, but not quite, nothing about them.

On the other hand, she was either Kim Possible, the nemesis of the people who worked here, or a clone of the same. That didn't seem like it would result in pleasant relations with the people there.

She decided to show no reaction to Shego.

"Ok, how about this: you're probably ready to sit up now."

The girl tried to sit up. She succeeded with no ill effects.

"And you'll be ready to walk out of here soon. However, you're not exactly in fighting trim. There are any number of people who would do all sorts of things to get themselves on the vaunted Kim Possible," for the first time Shego spoke with sarcasm and animosity, but it evaporated with her next words, "or a copy thereof.

"I'm sure you'd be completely safe with your family, but if you want to go off on your own you'll probably have to wait until you've trained yourself up to Kim's level _anyway_, so why not do the training here? You'll not only be sure that you'll be safe when you do go out, you'll also make sure that we're not doing anything evil by being in our midst the entire time.

"Necessary practice, keeping us from being evil, no one loses."

The girl asked, "Where's the exit again?"

Shego sighed, the girl thought that she could see a sadness in her eyes but wasn't sure. Regardless, Shego answered, "Out the door, left down the hall, right after the living quarters, exit is at the end of that hall."

"And if I go no one will stop me?" the girl asked.

"No one." Shego said, this time looking away.

The girl weighed various possibilities in her mind. Letting her go could be a bluff but she, or Kim, or whatever, had gotten pretty good at reading Shego and it didn't seem like one. If it wasn't a bluff then she had no idea what was going on. Why create a clone just to let it go? If it was a bluff then not calling it arguably put her in a better position than calling it. Better she be seen as playing along than be in open defiance.

She didn't think it was a bluff. She thought that if she wanted to she could leave. And that made her decide to stay. She _was_ curious, and, while she'd never stay if she were forced, if she could come and go as she pleased then she saw no downside to staying around for a bit.

Finally she said, "What was the lie?"

"Huh?" Shego seemed surprised. She seemed to think the conversation had ended and also seemed to have forgotten mention of a lie.

"You made up an 'elaborate lie' because you weren't sure if it was a good idea to let me know I was a clone. What was the lie?"

"It was elaborate, but it didn't take a lot of effort to make it up. It was just my story but with the pronouns changed to sound like it was your story."

"What is your story?"

"Personal."

"You were considering telling me anyway."

"Yeah, but..." Shego sighed. She didn't like all of the sighing she'd been doing. She'd known this was a bad idea from the beginning, yet she had insisted on doing it anyway. She'd been desperate and hadn't seen another way. Now she was going to have to … on the other hand, maybe it was a good sign. It showed interest. "Whatever," she said, trying to sound annoyed. "Make yourself comfortable."

The girl adjusted herself so she was sitting cross legged on the bed facing Shego. She rested her chin on her hands.

X  
xxx  
X

This story is inspired by Blackbird's _All I Really Want_, with permission. It is basically based on asking the question, "What if Shego had told the truth from the beginning?" and then taking tangents from there. So far it is Shego telling the truth, next chapter will be Shego's backstory (again, based on _All I Really Want_), and after that things should really begin to diverge.


	2. Fall from Grace

"Ok," Shego said, mostly to herself. "Since I'm not pretending this is your story you could probably use some background.

"After the comet we were on our own. Hego and the Wegoes could still pass as normal, and so some people we helped who worked in the right places made them new identities. Mego and I couldn't exactly hide being purple and green respectively, so there was no escaping what had happened.

"For Mego … well he's narcissistic enough that he could have been turned plaid and still not had it bother him, but for me it was a huge thing. I was the green girl. The freak. I was still in high school at the time and that was hell, but I could _never_ leave it behind. No matter where I went there was only one pale green person, so I could never just blend in and pretend to be normal."

"But you were a _hero_," the girl on the bed said.

"That didn't help, Kim- not-Kim... uh, you need a name."

"I think I should talk to my family before I decide on one," the girl said contemplatively. She accepted that she probably was a clone, but Shego was right about Kim's family: they'd accept Kim's clone as a member of their family. That was going to be a strange meeting. A moment later she snapped back to present reality, "But you're right, some placeholder until then would be useful."

"Ok, Placeholder."

"That's not what I meant!"

Shego grinned. "No. 'Placeholder'. I like it."

The girl, newly christened 'Placeholder', just made a grunt.

"Anyway," Shego resumed, "That didn't help, Placeholder. If anything it made it worse.

"I couldn't leave the job at the job. I was constantly criticized for how I did my work. Couldn't I have saved the day faster? Was I really putting my all into it? Did stopping the bad guy really require that much property damage? Didn't I know that that graffiti covered burnt out building my plasma damaged was actually a 'historic site', not in any official registry of course but still it was a 'National Treasure', which I had sullied with my playing the hero and thus..." Shego let Placeholder fill in the rest on her own.

"Oh," was all Placeholder could think to say.

"And then there was a question of style," Shego said. "We had a routine to how we did things. Mego used his shrinking power to sneak in, do reconnaissance, disarm any booby traps, sometimes even more. Once he was done he'd report to Hego and me, then the operation would openly commence. Hego would use his super strength and accompanying endurance to create a distraction. Once the enemy was distracted I'd come in and do most of the actual fighting. While Hego and I were keeping everyone occupied, Mego would evacuate any hostages and do any necessary sabotage that he couldn't do in the reconnaissance phase.

"When the Wegoes were old enough to join us, they helped me, but their style was entirely different. They could multiply into enough copies of themselves to immobilize their opponents just by piling on them.

"Hego was the traditional hero, Mego was the one who rescued people, the Wegoes were the adorable kids. I was the one throwing the punches and doing most of the actual violence.

"Everyone who thought I was too rough wouldn't let me hear the end of it, and the ones who thought we should be tougher on the bad guys usually didn't think a girl should be on the team to begin with."

Placeholder just nodded. She, well Kim but she had the memories, had had her fill of sexism long ago and it never actually ended. Kim dealt with it by being the absolute best but she didn't doubt that as soon as a male who was her equal, or -worse still- her better, showed up everything would get infinitely worse.

Kim was mostly able to get a pass because she wasn't part of a team in the traditional sense. She was a lone hero with a sidekick whose name most people couldn't remember. If she were part of a larger unit with equals it would be easy for the sexists to dismiss her contribution.

"The news loved the angle that I was the dark one," Shego resumed. "In the beginning it was two noble heroes and their hot headed short fused sister. Then it was four noble heroes and their violent sister.

"They even had some articles suggesting I was a bad influence on my younger brothers.

"Of course you can't run the same article over and over again so the media made it out that I was sliding further and further into darkness. They'd try to tally up how many punches I thew and how much plasma I discharged. If it was more than the last time it was time for another 'Shego becoming more violent' story. If it was less then they wouldn't mention it. Of course, when there was no change at all random variance meant that half the time they'd get to say I was getting worse."

"Ouch," Placeholder said.

"Thanks, princess," Shego said. "Anyway, the worst part was that Hego bought into the whole thing and thought that I was sliding into evil."

"Hego did say that the more you fought evil the more you liked evil," Placeholder said, drawing on Kim's memories.

"Yeah, that was his take. After his _fifteenth_ attempted intervention I decided I wasn't going to talk to him outside of missions any more."

"That probably made him think you were more evil," Placeholder said.

"Probably," Shego agreed. "And this is where the story I was going to tell you goes."

"I was wondering when we'd get to that," Placeholder said. "Do tell."

"All of that got to me, mostly it made me lonely because I didn't have a single friend, and-"

"Sorry," Placeholder said, gently taking one of Shego's hands.

"It wasn't your fault." Shego snorted. "You didn't even exist yet.

"Anyway, maybe it did make me a bit more angry, maybe it did make me a bit more violent, but apart from Hego buying into it, it didn't really matter to anyone but me. For all of the bad press I was still a hero in good standing.

"No article about me throwing more punches this week than last week could change that.

"Then, in one instant, everything changed." Shego took Placeholder's hand away from her own and put it back in Placeholder's lap. "There was a new villain, a small time, themed villain who called himself Doctor Sound-"

"I've never heard of him."

"There's a reason for that," Shego said darkly. "I ended up fighting him on top of a roof. In the final moments I had him cornered and was expecting him to either charge me to try to get away or to just surrender. The problem was, he didn't know I had him cornered." At first it seemed like an ordinary pause between sentences, but the time went on and Shego just sat there, not saying another word.

"What happened?" Placeholder asked softly.

"Wha?" Shego said as she snapped back to the present. "Sorry." Shego took a moment to compose herself and then said, "He took a step back when there was no back for him to step on."

"That's it?"

"No, that's the beginning. A news helicopter recorded things from just the wrong angle. It looked like I _might_ have pushed him.

"That was enough. Everyone who had said I was getting too extreme or going evil was convinced that their suspicions had been confirmed. That's to be expected, what took me completely off guard was everyone _else_."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that in an instant everyone in the world turned on me. Even the few people who had publicly defended me before found that it was so much more _fun_ to tear someone down than build her up.

"I mean that no one would believe me when I said that I didn't push the man. I mean that every single owner of every single building I had ever been involved in a mission in decided to simultaneously sue me for damages to their property. I mean that I was denounced as a poor role model for children and a corrupter of youth whose very existence would cause little girls throughout Go City to grow up to be murderesses.

"All of this time I was trying to set the record straight and say that, even though I didn't kill him, I was so very sorry for being the cause of his death." Shego was suddenly angry, "Because I was sorry, damn it! I'd never felt so horrible in my life as when that asshole died. I didn't agree to Hego's plan of becoming superheroes because I wanted to fight or because I wanted vengeance, I agreed to it because I believed in justice.

"I wanted to take Dr. Sound to jail. I didn't want to kill him. I didn't want to kill anyone. I swore that I'd never kill again. Which probably seems redundant since I never planned on killing anyone in the first place."

"You put me- you put Kim and Ron into loads of deathtraps."

"None of which stood a chance of actually hurting either of you- of them," Shego thought about the mistake they'd both made. "Damn this is going to be hard, Placey."

"'Placey'?" Placeholder asked.

"Well, I can't exactly call you 'Kimmie'."

"Whatever."

"Where were we?"

"Death traps."

"Right. In addition to expecting you- her- them to escape, I always had at least seven ways to save her if somehow things went wrong."

"Seven?"

"The first three would make it look like Drakken had failed in either the design or manufacture of the death trap. The fourth was in case things went so wrong that I had to risk a failure that had no obvious explanation, and the last three were desperation plans that would make it unmistakable I'd saved," Shego paused to make sure she said the right words, "Kim and Ron, and thus would destroy my reputation as a villain."

"You had a tendency to look happy about them getting in the deathtraps."

"Well, Place, I-"

"Place?"

"I'm trying to work out variations on your temporary name, PH. I'm not going to call you 'Princess' or 'Placeholder' every time I want to make reference to you," Shego said, slightly annoyed.

"'Place' is better than 'Placey'."

"Noted. I was happy to see them get into deathtraps because it meant I got a free show watching them get out of the deathtraps."

"A free show?"

"The only thing missing was popcorn."

"Ok, so you have a semi-plausible explanation for the deathtraps," Placeholder said. "And I suppose it would explain why you never punched Kim with the full force your plasma provides."

"Uh... out of curiosity, did you just figure that out or does Kim know I've been pulling my punches?"

"Given what you can punch through when you want to and the relative frailty of human flesh and bone, do you really have to ask?"

"Kim knows."

"Kim knows," Placeholder nodded. "So is there more to the story?"

"Nothing I said or did could convince anyone, and that includes my family, that I didn't do it. Nothing could convince them that I was sorry for it happening.

"I tried to track down Dr. Sound's family to see if there was anything I could do to help."

"Did you?"

"Eventually, yes. At the time, no. I wrote an editorial against vigilantism because even professionals, which we were -at that point Team Go had an understanding with the Go City Police Department- could kill someone with a simple mistake.

"And then, finally, the pressure got to me."

"How so?"

"You have to remember that there wasn't really evidence against me. He died from falling off a building, there was a video that made things look ambiguous. I _wanted_ to be arrested. I thought that if I had my day in court I could prove I was innocent and everything would go back to normal.

"Before Dr. Sound died I never thought I'd want _normal_. I hated normal. But even with all the things that made my life hell before he died, that was infinitely better than how things were after he died.

"They didn't arrest me, in spite of me offering to turn myself in, because they knew they couldn't make the case hold up against me. And they were very clear on that. It wasn't because they believed I was innocent, it was because they didn't have enough evidence to prove that I was guilty.

"Which was basically the same thing as saying I was guilty.

"Since I wasn't arrested, and I was still in high school, I was still attending school. Except instead of being the green freak, I was now the killer green freak who got away with murder."

Images of a school engulfed in green flames played out in Placeholder's mind. She asked, "What happened when the pressure got to you?" even though she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"Almost nothing," Shego said. "I punched one bully and broke his nose."

"That's it?"

"His name was Allen, when I was planning to tell you this was your story I was going to say you hit Bonnie."

"I would nev-"

"Are you sure? Someone's been making your life hell for years, your entire world is coming crashing down around you, everyone thinks you're guilty of a murder you didn't commit, and you don't think you might lash out?"

"You're right. I know that I've never even met her and, even so, just having Kim's memories of her makes me want to punch her. If I were stressed enough to loose control I probably would."

"The important thing is that punching Allen was something that could be proven. Normally a fight in a school would never get that kind of attention, but it was basically used as a proxy for what happened to Dr. Sound. They even called it, 'assault with a deadly weapon,' on the grounds that my hands theoretically could kill someone.

"When they tried to arrest me for that... that's when I ran. And when I found out about Global Justice."

"Global Justice?" Placeholder knew the name, of course, but wouldn't expect them to be involved in the story.

"They never had all that much interest in Team Go because we were strictly local, but they had apparently been planning on recruiting me when I was older and their recruitment files double as their 'How to take down a threat' files."

"So the fact that they've worked with Kim..."

"Probably means that they've worked up multiple plans on how to take down Kim."

"What did they do to you?"

"Well they saw me as a hero turned villain just like everyone else, so they decided to hunt me down before I could get my villainous act together."

"I'm guessing they failed."

"Damn straight. But they did manage to make me feel like an animal. Being hunted will do that to you."

"So where does the story end?"

"It ends with me finding that there was one group that would accept me. Before that I tried being a fugitive hero and got certified to teach, but neither of those worked out."

"I'm guessing that the group that would accept you happened to be villains."

"Some of them thought that I did kill Dr. Sound and had no problem with it. I wanted nothing to do with them. Others believed me when I said I was innocent. A surprisingly large portion of the villainous community only became criminals after being falsely accused of being criminals."

"Really?" Placeholder had a hard time believing that and let her incredulity show in her voice.

"I said, 'a surprisingly large portion,' not, 'a majority,'" Shego retorted. "It's a large enough portion that a lot of villains who _are_ guilty of every crime they've ever been accused of are still willing to believe that someone claiming to be innocent may well be innocent.

"I wasn't ready to sign on with take-over-the-world schemes, but it turned out I had an aptitude for thieving."

"I'll say."

"I started out as an apprentice and within a year my teacher claimed to have been surpassed. I stayed in that career until I met Drakken. He was perfect ... well ... almost. He's got a lot to learn about consent-

"Mind control comes to mind," Placeholder said.

Shego ignored the comment and continued, "-but that's true of villains in general. He needs stuff stolen frequently, his staff is unionized, he's brilliant enough to create reality warping inventions while still bumbling enough to not be at risk of actual world domination-"

"Two things."

"Why is it always two things?"

"Thing one: How is not being able to succeed a plus?"

"Do I seem like the kind of person who wants to live in someone else's autocracy?"

"Point."

"I like the world the way it is. A mess of conflicting laws and jurisdictional conflicts. A never ending line of politicians and unelected villains tripping over each other trying to grab power for themselves while leaving the rest of us with some modicum of freedom."

"You think politicians are elected villains?"

"Read the congressional record sometime."

"I think I'll pass. Thing two: Drakken came pretty close at times."

"Close isn't good enough, Place. Close just gets you frustrated."

Placeholder thought about the memories she inherited from Kim. The ones where Drakken _had_ come close. One memory wanted to be first in line, she tried not to think about it, trying not to think about it made her think about it more, and finally she was reliving a moment that she'd never lived through in the first place.

Kim told Shego that she hated Shego. Kim kicked Shego off a building into a tower charged with enough electricity to kill any normal human. The tower collapsed on top of Shego which also would have killed any normal human. Kim didn't realize that Shego's comet-given power would save Shego, instead she had every reason to believe that Shego had died. After all, Kim had done enough to Shego to kill _almost_ anyone twice over. Kim smiled at that.

Placeholder didn't like that memory. Placeholder didn't like that _person_. For the first time Placeholder hoped that she _wasn't_ the real Kim.

"Moving on," Placeholder said, a slight shudder in her speech.

"Is something wrong?" Shego asked, concern audible in her voice.

"One of Kim's memories," she said and hoped Shego wouldn't inquire further.

"Something involving me?" Shego asked.

"Yes," Placeholder said with, she realized after saying it, perhaps too much force.

"Did I do something?" Shego asked.

"Kim did something," Placeholder said angrily, the volume of her voice rising. Shego had a look that was unfamiliar in Placeholder's memories: utter shock. When Placeholder resumed she spoke softly. "Kim almost killed you."

"_That_," Shego said, contempt and disgust mingling in her voice.

"And then, when she had every reason to think she had killed you, she smiled."

"I ... didn't know that," Shego said, a slight shake in her voice.

"I don't want to be Kim," Placeholder said.

"Kim is better than that particular memory makes her seem," Shego said.

"Don't defend her!" Placeholder shouted.

Shego held up her hands, in a gesture of, "Calm down," and, "Give me a moment to explain."

"**But**- there was going to be a 'but'," Shego said.

"Sorry."

"But you don't have to be anything you don't want to be," Shego said, "and you can't be Kim anyway. Kim's already being Kim."

"Ok, so, what now?" Placeholder asked.

"Well, you're ready to walk by now..." Shego trailed off.

"I just realized I never told you," Placeholder said, "I'm staying. I decided to stay before asking about your story."

Shego tried not to smile. She failed.

"I've had living quarters prepared for you," Shego said. She stood up and gestured for Placeholder to follow. "Shall we?"


	3. Ruminations

The walk to the living quarters was a short one, and it passed mostly in silence.

By the time they arrived the clone had settled on "Place" as the name she'd think of herself as until a more permanent one could be found.

Place had mostly kept her eyes forward but she every time a door opened she instinctively looked to see if a threat might be coming through it. What she saw in those glimpses gave her more to think about than she really wanted.

Shego said something about the room not being well furnished, but Place wasn't really listening. She was thinking about the other rooms she'd had glimpses into. None of them were well furnished. No personal touches, or at least not much in the way of them. Not much point in making your quarters into a home when some teenager could show up at any moment and blow the whole complex up.

That was a disturbing thought for place. Evil lairs were places where people lived. Granted they were mostly henchmen who could transfer to a different location, but that different location would be another evil lair. Another place that a "hero" might destroy. Stopping someone from taking over the world was important, obviously, but did Kim really need to bring about utter destruction? Did she really need to go around blowing up people's homes?

How many of them were like Shego, working this job only because they knew that the world was never seriously at risk? How was what they did any different from any other private security force?

The Middleton Space Center routinely housed things that could be used to take over the world, how would Kim react to someone blowing up the security guard's homes?

There was no question how someone who did that would be viewed, and the word to describe such a person wasn't 'hero'.

And all this brought up another thought. If one thought of the henchmen as simply hired security, which technically they were, then how were the villains operations any different from that of various "legitimate businesses that destroyed far more lives and yet always seemed to avoid prosecution.

Drakken threatens the world and everyone on his staff is sent to jail after seeing their home blown up. A "respectable" business actually _damages_ the world, causing immeasurable harm to hundreds or even thousands of people, and the CEO never seemed to take a fall for it. Certainly not the security guards.

While she wanted to tell herself she was nothing like Kim, the memory of the fight in the rain still looming large in her mind, Place knew that the only real difference was that she was looking at things from an outsider's perspective for the first time. Since she knew she wasn't Kim, she had nothing invested in seeing Kim as being right. She was free to judge as harshly as she wanted, and she was content to judge quite harshly.

The larger problem, though, was that her entire personality had been built on the ideas of good and evil, right and wrong, villains and heroes, the law abiding and the law breakers... in short: black and white. The world now seemed exceedingly sepia.

Place had no idea what to do about that.

She located the bedroom and collapsed on the bed.

She curled up in a ball and waited for darkness to take her.

xxxxx

Author's note:

Some people noted how harshly Place was judging Kim last chapter.

There are a variety of reasons for that. Kim, and thus Place, is too smart to overlook all of them. Thus the part here where she recognizes that having an outsider's perspective changes things. But she also has blind spots. She isn't taking into account the power of first impressions or the way stripping an event of context can twist things.

If someone were to watch just the part of the 'So The Drama' that Place remembered they'd think that Kim was villain and probably a murderer too. That was the first _detailed_ memory of Kim that Place accessed and it formed her entire paradigm for judging Kim.


End file.
